SOUTH BEND, Ind. - Notre Dame is holding out hope.

Fighting Irish coach Charlie Weis can see the expectations rising among his players that they might find a way into the national championship game.

“I think their expectation level is going up. Just like every fan and follower of Notre Dame football, when things around them start helping, when other teams start losing, that causes optimism for them as well,” Weis said Sunday.

Weis said he could sense it on the flight home Saturday night when after the plane landed he heard a roar from the back of the plane. He sent strength coach Ruben Mendoza back to find out the cause of the commotion. One of the players had just found out that Kansas State had upset then-No. 4 Texas 45-42.

That, along with last week’s Louisville, Auburn and California all losing, moved the Irish (9-1) up three spots in the AP poll to No. 6. The Irish have a shot at playing for a national championship even with Arkansas (9-1) vaulting a spot ahead of them.

Who outside of the most faithful of Irish fans would have thought that was possible following their 47-21 loss at home to No. 2 Michigan back in September? Luckily for the Irish, a lot of other teams have run into problems.

“We’ve already had our blemish, it’s been well documented,” Weis said. “We’ve had our close calls. But everyone else has had those close calls too. We’re not alone. Take your pick. Take any of them. Go look, everyone has had close calls.”

The Irish would have been even closer to a possible title game if South Carolina could have kicked a 48-yard field goal at the end to beat No. 3 Florida.

“I was rooting for the Gamecocks,” Weis said.

The Irish still need a little luck and a lot of help for it to all work out. But it’s not quite as far-fetched as it was Saturday morning. Florida (9-1) still must play rival Florida State and someone else in the Southeastern Conference title game. Arkansas still has to play LSU and Florida if the Razorbacks reach the SEC title game. The Irish can help themselves quite a bit with a win over No. 4 USC (8-1), which also still has games with No. 17 California (8-2) and rival UCLA.

Slideshow   The Week in Sports Pictures Swimmers get synchronized, a tennis star gets cloned, and much more. more photos

If Notre Dame fans could have their way the national championship game would pit the Notre Dame-USC winner vs. the Michigan-Ohio State winner.

Both Weis and USC coach Pete Carroll said they were treating the remaining games like playoff games. Weis said he talked to his players about taking that mentality before beating Air Force 39-17 on Saturday.

“So we’re going into the second round of playoffs this week,” he said. “I think you’d better win the second round and not worry about the third and fourth round yet.”

The second-round opponent is Army (3-7).

“That’s all I’m looking at because that’s all I can do,” he said. “All I can do with our program is to go beat Army and if we beat Army, then we try to beat the next guys. And if we’ve done that, we’ve done what we can do.”

That and hope for a few more upsets.